Helen Mirren gets honest about handing nervousness before new roles

Helen Mirren has had a decades long career full of impressive accolades, but she’s still terrified of every new role.

"I think it's because every project that you go into is an unknown," Mirren, 80, told People.

"And each time you enter into a new project, you never know how it's going to be or how the people are going to be and whether the chemistry will be good or a disaster. So stepping into a project is nerve-racking," she explained.

The actress, who won an Oscar in 2007 for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, gave the example of that film, highlighting that the late queen hadn’t been portrayed onscreen before like that.

"Now of course it's been done over and over and over again, but it hadn't really been done before. Not like that," Mirren said.

The Mobland actress continued, "And that was very unknown territory at the time. And as you are probably aware, the British have a very extraordinary — and not exactly ambivalent — but a very profound emotional relationship with their monarchy and especially with the Queen because she was there for such a long time.”

"So taking her, doing that, what was, we had no idea how that was going to be received," she said.

So how does the Dame handle the nervousness? By pretending to be confident!

Mirren said, "A lot of it is pretense, of course, sort of acting. You feel insecure, but you pretend you don't. And we all do it, don't we?"

She also thinks its the nervousness that truly drives a person.

"And that is the thing that sort of galvanizes you and drives you forward is the fear and the excitement of that," she said.

Helen Mirren is currently starring in Netflix mystery The Thursday Murder Club alongside Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley.